Can Animals Show Us How to Treat Depression in Humans?

Anxiety and depression have become something of a modern plague, with the NIH estimating that some 16 million adults in the US experienced at least one major depressive episode in 2015. For young people, rates of depression are even higher, and they appear to be getting worse still.

To get a handle on illness, researchers often turn to animal models, and depression and anxiety are no different. Various species have served as stand-ins for humans or as valuable counterpoints to our own exp